Obama administration tightens smog limits but satisfies few

By Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post •October 1, 2015 7:07 pm

WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency tightened limits on smog-related pollution Thursday, but the new standard falls far short of what environmentalists and public health experts had recommended.

The new threshold for ground-level ozone, which forms when emissions from power plants, other industrial facilities, vehicles and landfills react in sunlight, will be lowered from its current level of 75 parts per billion to 70. EPA’s scientific advisory committee had recommended the agency set the new level somewhere between 60 and 70 ppb.

The issue of how to regulate smog, which can cause or aggravate such health problems as asthma and heart disease and is a suspect in premature death, has been a contentious one for decades. While the determination is supposed to be made solely on scientific concerns rather than economic ones, any lowered limit carries enormous economic consequences for states and cities across the nation. Communities that consistently fail to meet the standard could eventually face restrictions on certain kinds of industrial development.

“EPA has threaded the needle in strengthening the ozone standard,” said S. William Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, which represents state and local air regulators. “The agency has appropriately balanced the views of divergent stakeholders with the public’s right to breathe clean air. By following the expert advice of its independent science advisers, EPA has set the stage for state and local air pollution control agencies to begin implementing this important program.”

But environmentalists and groups such as the American Lung Association had pushed for a much tougher standard. In June 2014, EPA’s group of independent science advisers, the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee, had said the most vulnerable groups might still suffer adverse consequences under a limit of 70 ppb.

The committee “advises that, based on the scientific evidence, a level of 70 ppb provides little margin of safety for the protection of public health, particularly for sensitive subpopulations,” it wrote.

John Walke, clean air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, faulted the administration’s decision Thursday.

“The president’s legacy is shaping up to be one of unprecedented leadership on combating climate change, but weakness on health standards for smog pollution,” Walke said.

American Lung Association president and CEO Harold P. Wimmer said in a statement that “while the updated standard is a step in the right direction,” setting it at 70 “simply does not reflect what the science shows is necessary to truly protect public health.”

Earlier this month, according to several individuals, the White House Council on Environmental Quality discussed the idea of setting the standard at 68 ppb. But industry officials, who have campaigned to preserve the current standard of 75 ppb, said such a change would have a major impact on their operations.

Paul Noe, vice president for operations at the American Forest and Paper Association, said his group determined that dropping the standard from 70 to 68 would increase the costs of compliance for pulp and paper firms 10-fold. It would increase the number of affected pulp and paper facilities from 41 to 114, according to the analysis, raising the total costs from $125 million to $1.1 billion.

“We appreciate the fact we were given the opportunity to speak with [Office of Management and Budget], EPA and other White House offices about our concern about going further” below 70, he said.

But Noe said that since nitrogen oxide, the pollution most associated with smog, has been cut in half since 1990, and is set to be reduced by another third between now and 2025, it made no sense to reduce the existing standard given that many communities are still striving to meet it.

“We’re disappointed in the decision to reduce the standard before the current standard’s yet be implemented,” he said.

National Manufacturers Association CEO Jay Timmons said in a statement Thursday that while “the worst-case scenario had been avoided,” the EPA rule is still “overly burdensome, costly and misguided.”

“We know that this regulation could have been worse, but it still feels like a punch in the gut,” said Tom Riordan, CEO of Neenah Enterprises, Inc. and a NAM member. “Manufacturers are tough and resilient, but when Washington puts politics above job creation, we still pay a price.”

At an appearance last week before the Business Roundtable, the president emphasized that his administration was legally obligated to examine the federal smog standard on a regular basis. “The ozone rules date back to when I was I think still in law school, before I had any gray hair.”

“We are mindful that in some cases, because of the nature of where pollutants are generated, where they blow, that this can create a really complicated situation for certain local jurisdictions and local communities, and some states and counties end up being hit worse than others,” he said. “And we’re trying to work with those states and those communities as best we can taking their concerns into account.”

While Obama has sided with environmentalists repeatedly throughout his tenure, the question of how to regulate ozone is one of the few areas in which the White House has often been at odds with its liberal base. In September 2011 the president pulled back an EPA proposal to tighten the standard, arguing it did not make sense to increase the regulatory burden on the private sector “particularly as our economy continues to recover.”

According to records on OMB’s Web site, Howard Shelanski, a top official of OMB who reviews proposed regulations, personally attended meetings last month on ozone that administration officials held with the National Association of Manufacturers, American Petroleum Institute and Marathon Oil Corp., but sent deputies to sessions with environmental and public health advocates such as the American Nurses Association, Earthjustice, the American Lung Association, Sierra Club and NRDC.